Subscribe
the inside of a large building with a dome

Lessons Learned From Politicians

B to B has an interesting article: “Election ’08: The candidates’ e-mail errors”1

It lists four mistakes:

  1. Signup problems (including Obama’s site’s demand that you contribute!!)
  2. Lack of welcome messages
  3. Lack of relevance
  4. Obama’s list uses CAPTCHA on the unsubscribe page, something that would be illegal for you to do

These things are Email Marketing 101:

  1. Make it easy for the subscriber to sign up
  2. Let the subscriber know that sign-up was successful
  3. Send messages the subscriber thinks are relevant
  4. Make it easy for the subscriber to leave

There are more complex things, at least one of which2 (data verification) caused a small firestorm in the deliverability blogosphere not long ago.345678 (You shouldn’t be emailing “Stupid Poopypants” now should you?) But, if you can get those four things down, you will be doing better than at least 80% of your competition.

Footnotes

  1. Karen Bannan, Election ’08: The Candidates’ e-Mail Error, BtoB Magazine (2008), https://web.archive.org/web/20080922060430/http://www.btobonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080911/FREE/809109952/1084/FREE (last visited Sep 11, 2008). ↩︎
  2. Ken Magill, Stupid E-Mail Watch: Now Joe Biden’s Calling Me Names, Direct (Aug. 26, 2008), https://web.archive.org/web/20080911095437/http://directmag.com:80/disciplines/email/0826-obama-biden-email-signup/ (last visited Sep 11, 2008). ↩︎
  3. Dylan Boyd, You Are the Ones We Despise, The Email Wars (Aug. 27, 2008), https://web.archive.org/web/20080911133747/http://theemailwars.com:80/2008/08/27/you-are-the-ones-we-despise/ (last visited Sep 11, 2008). ↩︎
  4. Laura Atkins, Who Is Responsible for Data Integrity, Word to the Wise (Aug. 27, 2008), https://wordtothewise.com/2008/08/who-is-responsible-for-data-integrity/ (last visited Sep 11, 2008). ↩︎
  5. Laura Atkins, Data Integrity, Part 2, Word to the Wise (Aug. 28, 2008), https://wordtothewise.com/2008/08/data-integrity-part-2/ (last visited Sep 11, 2008). ↩︎
  6. Al Iverson, On Political Speech, DOI, and Mr. Poopyhead, Spam Resource (Aug. 29, 2008), https://www.spamresource.com/2008/08/on-political-speech-coi-and-mr.html (last visited Sep 11, 2008). ↩︎
  7. Ken Magill, You Ask for Garbage, You Get It, Direct (Sep. 2, 2008), https://web.archive.org/web/20080911231516/http://directmag.com/disciplines/email/0902-obama-biden-mail-followup/ (last visited Sep 11, 2008). ↩︎
  8. Laura Atkins, Garbage In… Garbage Out, Word to the Wise (Sep. 3, 2008), https://wordtothewise.com/2008/09/garbage-in-garbage-out/ (last visited Sep 11, 2008). ↩︎
Picture of Mickey

Mickey

A recognized leader in the fight against online abuse, specializing in email anti-abuse, compliance, deliverability, privacy, and data protection. With over 20 years of experience tackling messaging abuse, I help organizations clean up their networks and maintain a safe, secure environment.